The Outlook magazine, a popular national weekly, has been publishing excerpts from the taped conversations of Niira Radia, the now (in)famous lobbyist of, inter alia, the House of Tata, with several individuals, including the former Indian Telecommunications Minister, A Raja. In one of the tapes published in the issue of 14th February 2011 of Niira Radia’s conversation with one Manish, an employee at Vaishnavi Communications (another corporate communication consultancy firm) Radia says “In the middle of the night (Raja, the Minister) called Anil Ambani to come and collect his LoI (Letter of Intent) for a dual technology license” and “...when you ask Mr. Raja why are you doing this, his view is ‘what do you do, I have a party to run”.

In India systems that are installed are seldom worked. There are numerous examples but, in the immediate context, the example of the Ministry of environment & Forests (MoEF) should suffice. According to Wikipedia, “the Ministry is responsible for planning, promoting, coordinating and overseeing the environmental and forestry programmes” of the country. Its main activities being conservation and survey of flora and fauna of India, forests and other wilderness areas, prevention and control of pollution, afforestation and land degradation mitigation.

The other day something very unusual happened in the state of Maharashtra. Almost all its officers, numbering around 150,000 went on a day’s strike. They were protesting against killing of Additional District Magistrate of Nashik, Yeshwant Sonwane. Sonwane, an uncommonly upright and courageous district officer, was burnt to death by members of the oil mafia when he caught them on camera pilfering kerosene from a tanker. The protest was organised under the aegis of the Maharshtra Gazetted Officers’ Mahasangh. Its President said that the Mahasangh’s members were not really on a strike but were “shunning work” to protest against the gruesome act which had shaken the employees.

The other day the Bhopal edition of a national daily reported a raid on a local manufacturing unit of spurious Unani medicines. Unani is a traditional system of medicine which has been practiced in the country for centuries. Although the name suggests that the system is Grecian, it in fact is a Greco-Arabic system that is widely taken recourse to in South Asia. No wonder, it is generally patronised by Muslims, who would seem to have adopted it as their own. Certainly not as expensive as its allopathic counterparts, Unani for the poor is a default medical system. And, quite heartlessly, there are people who apparently are prepared to harm the hapless poor for a few quick bucks by having them treated by fake medicines.

China is generally known for the environmental degradation that it has wrought in its various regions in its quest for rapid economic growth. Reports of extensive desertification, contamination of its rivers, air pollution, acid-rains and so on frequently emanate from the country. That it has been taking firm steps to protect and nurture its natural assets – of late, with greater vigour – is, however, not so well-known. It has created numerous national parks in several batches since 1982, with the last and the seventh batch of national parks coming into existence in 2008. As on date the country has as many as 208 national parks. Massive investments are being made to modernise these parks, conserve their ecology and to provide good and sufficient facilities for inland and foreign tourists.

The news has just come in that Beijing municipal administration has decided to restrict the quota of passenger vehicles for 2011 to 20000 a month. The monthly quota will be distributed among fleet buyers and first-time private buyers of passenger vehicles. Only permanent residents of Beijing as well as those in police and military services would be eligible to buy new cars in 2011.

With as few as 3200 tigers in the wilds of the world as many as thirteen tiger-range countries met in November 2010 in Tiger Summit in St. Petersburg in an effort to save the species. They committed around $300 million during the next five years towards doubling the current world population of the species by 2022. Hosted by Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, governments concerned capped a year-long political process with new funding to support the plan, known as the Global Tiger Recovery Programme

The other day our entire family visited Hyper City, the new hyper-market in the premises of the mall known as DB City. Promoted by a big vernacular media group, the Mall is situated close to the biggest business district of the central Indian city of Bhopal. Built on the pattern of any other mall, it is gradually filling up with shops, chain-stores, eateries and even a bowling alley, currently a curiosity in the town.

The other day, Shivraj Singh Chauhan, chief minister (CM) of Madhya Pradesh (MP), came out with a startling statement. Speaking at the Panna Tiger Reserve he asserted that he was not in favour of creating a buffer zone for it. One could not “destroy” Panna only to let the tigers “survive”, he said. He further asserted that humans were more important than tigers.

Ever since I crossed 70 I have been apprehensive of the future. With the rising life expectancy I just do not know how long I am going to live. The government from which I retired more than a decade ago provides a pension which till now is handsome. I do not know what happens in the future with the continuing double-digit inflation. For the present things are comfortable – the government supplies the basic medicines that I need and I can afford to buy the vitamins, micronutrients and other diet supplements. But their prices are also rising almost every month. That is, however, a minor worry. What gives me nightmares is what would happen if I develop some disabling ailment or if I happen to go into a coma. Geriatric care here being what it is, I may become an unbearable burden on my wife or may have to lie around uncared and neglected oblivious of my surroundings.

That ecologically India has been facing tough times has been known for some time. Things have not been happy and what is perhaps more forbidding is that they are going to become more difficult in the future, generally worsening the plight of the people. Many of those who are suffering perhaps do not even know what is really hitting them. Global warming may have been the reason for most of the misery, yet one cannot entirely rule out thoughtless human interventions with nature.

Not many would have heard of the Nenets who inhabit the Yamal Peninsula in the Arctic Circle between the Kara Sea and the Gulf of Ob. I too hadn’t until I came across a feature on them in Geographical, the magazine of the Royal Geographical Society of UK.

The forecasts for India’s high economic growth have been coming thick and fast. Only late last year the Parisbased Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development predicted a 5.9% growth for India in 2009 and 7.2% 2010. In his budget speech earlier this year the Finance Minister, Pranab Mukherji, had promised to put the economy on a trajectory of high growth and there have been several occasions when he predicted that India’s GDP would grow at the rate of more than 8%.

Any natural or man-made disaster raises controversies. A disaster of the scale that Bhopal witnessed because of the leak of the lethal methyl isocynate (MIC) on one cold December morning in 1984 was sure to raise controversies of huge proportions. That is precisely what it did, and more so after the June7, 2010 ultra-mild verdict handed out to the accused officials of Union Carbide of India Ltd. (UCIL). In the process, facts and fiction got merged and one doesn’t really know what is true and what is not and what to believe and what not to. A few of these are subject of this article.

Recently we had a 16-hour power outage commencing from midnight until 4.00 next afternoon. The inverter saw us through the hot and stuffy night but it, too, lost its energy by the next afternoon. There was no alternative but to bear the acute discomfort of an air-less hot afternoon. Outages are frequent but this was out of the ordinary.

The Time magazine, in one of its issues, before Barak Obama was to visit China in 2009, made a mention of a few things that he could learn from the Chinese. Among them were the Chinese habit of saving and the care that they take of the elderly. Chinese have not given up these traditions in the euphoria of accretion of untold riches. Both are twined together, as one becomes the enabling element for the other.

“No roads lead into Naxal-affected areas” screamed a headline recently in a national daily. An internal review the other day at the Indian Planning Commission revealed what has been known all these years. Among the 34 districts reviewed by the Plan panel, Dantewada in the Bastar region of the South Eastern state of Chhattisgarh had the poorest record on road connectivity. The district was the scene of a recent carnage when Maoists, aka Naxals, killed as many as 76 police personnel in a well planned ambush. According to the Plan panel member secretary, road connectivity is a big issue in Maoists-affected districts. While district officials cannot be easily deployed in these districts, those who are available do the work of village development out of the district headquarters for want of roads.